Unleashing a sure-fire hit

Richard Hinds

Doug Bollinger is one of the stars gearing up for this season's Big Bash League. Photo: Reuters

LIKE rebranding football as ''Get it and Kick It'', or golf as ''Hit a Small Ball Until it Goes Into a Hole'', the literally titled Big Bash League does not leave much to the imagination. The name of the revamped, city-based Twenty20 competition will not do much to endear it to those traditionalists who would still rather be dragged into an industrial meat mincer by their MCC ties than watch the slap-and-dash version of the game.

But, of course, Twenty20 cricket is not designed to appeal to the leather armpatch brigade. The enterprise is all about capturing - and making money from - a new audience. And with Fox Sports able to boast that Twenty20 is the ''fastest growing sport in the world'', that mission is being accomplished. More slowly, it must be said, in Australia than elsewhere in the world.

It is a sign of the times that international one-day cricket was popularised in Australia during the cowboy days of Kerry Packer. Yet, Cricket Australia was late to realise the potential of Twenty20. In the even shorter version of the game, the Indians have been the cowboys.

So the Big Bash League, with its eight teams - two in both Sydney and Melbourne - is an attempt to match the lucrative success of the Indian Premier League. Or, given the vast salaries paid to players in that competition and the IPL's stranglehold on the international cricket schedule, to at least latch on to the runaway Twenty20 bandwagon.

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Fox Sports has been a fortunate beneficiary of Australia's initial failure to grasp the significance of Twenty20. Channel Nine fulfils its contractual obligations, plugging away with one-dayers that have become a lot like Khloe Kardashian to Twenty20's Kim. Meanwhile, Fox had a ratings hit in the last two seasons with the old state-based competition.

Timing is everything. It probably did not hurt Fox that last summer, particularly, Australia's decline as a Test cricketing power had viewers looking for alternatives to the Ashes slaughter. But the competent manner in which the Big Bash was presented was certainly part of its success.

The change in the competition's format from a state to city-based competition and the vastly increased promotion by Cricket Australia, will change Fox Sports coverage somewhat. Shane Warne's somewhat mischievously titled ''comeback'' - he is playing half a dozen games with the Melbourne Stars - will be an obvious focus. Starting with the Stars' opening game against the Sydney Thunder on Saturday, Warne will be ''wired for sound''. Which, we are promised, will include comments about his array of deliveries and thoughts on the batsmen. Not the type of unfortunate sounds evoked by his besotted tweets to Elizabeth Hurley.

There will also be the now compulsory production gadgets. Fox Tracker will measure the length of the ''biggest bashes''. ''Flame Ball'' is an instant indication of deliveries bowled faster than 145km/h, not a tribute to American singer Jerry Lee Lewis.

But rather than any fancy tricks, the cornerstone of Fox Sports' cricket coverage of the past few years has been its relatively low key but very knowledgeable and amiable commentary team - Brendon Julian, Damien Fleming, Allan Border, Mark Waugh and Greg Blewett.

Assuming his pending incumbency in the Indian Big Brother house does not last, they are likely to be joined by the straight talking Andrew Symonds. Although, for viewers, the greater relief is that the experts will not be joined by Brian Taylor and Warren Smith. Last season, the pair were given the rather curious task of yelling very loud and literal descriptions of what viewers could see with their own eyes - the ball had gone for six, been caught or just been patted down the pitch. This surfeit of raucously relayed information did not seem to sit comfortably with the experts, who had even less time to provide meaningful insight about an already frantic game.

Otherwise, the Big Bash League will sell itself. The presence of imported axemen such as Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard will raise the standard and the games will fit nicely around the Test calendar for those who enjoy both forms of the game. The whole thing might seem about as subtle as an elbow to the throat. But as Cricket Australia has belatedly discovered, no cricket administrator ever went broke overestimating the public's appetite for the big bash.